I must be missing something.
I agree with Apple that the FBI or anyone else, least of all anyone in the Feral Gummint, should have a master key for all their phones.

OTOH, if a judge issues a warrant for one specific phone or phones owned by one specific entity involved in a criminal act, why can’t Apple, not the gummint, unlock that one phone and still keep the master key? All the FBI gets is the content of the phone, not the key or the software.

Is this actually a ploy by the FBI under guise of antiterrorism to spy on everyone without a warrant?
Why won’t they be satisfied with the contents of that one phone?

An Israeli company has been selling that hack for the past year – it loads their version of iOS onto the phone without disturbing present hardware/software. When the phone is rebooted, you have access to everything on it.

The FBI’s position was bullshit. They could have broken that phone at any time by going to a third party … a six digit code is easy to crack, provided you embed the memory in a device that doesn’t erase it after ten password fails.

Breaking in just requires wanting to get in enough to spend a few hundred thousand dollars.

The FBI wanted Apple to give them a tool that would let any cop break into any phone easily at any time. Apple said bite me, and their software engineers have stated that they will quit Apple before they work on any such backdoor.

A back door for the FBI into any phone is what this is about. They are still butthurt over Apple deciding to encrypt by default, and put an end to their “copy all phones on detention” game.